A most un-Canadian caper

Canada's prime minister clings on to office, for the moment

THERE are no tanks in the streets or protesters occupying the airport, but Canada is in the midst of political turmoil the like of which this normally placid country has rarely seen. Only seven weeks ago Stephen Harper, the prime minister, won a second term for his Conservative government, but once again without winning a parliamentary majority. Now the three disparate opposition parties—the centrist Liberals, the socialist New Democrats (NDP) and the separatist Bloc Québécois—have ganged up in order to oust the Conservatives and replace them with a centre-left coalition. That left Mr Harper scrabbling for survival.

On Thursday December 4th he asked Michaëlle Jean, who as governor-general acts as Canada's head of state, to suspend Parliament until January. After a two-hour meeting, she agreed to do so. That means that for now Mr Harper has dodged a confidence vote scheduled for December 8th that the opposition parties, provided they stick together, were bound to win. The opposition holds 163 of the 308 seats in the House of Commons.

Their alliance is an unlikely one. Stéphane Dion, the Liberal leader, is an academic from Quebec who came into politics a decade ago expressly to oppose the French-speaking province's separatists, represented by Gilles Duceppe and his Bloc Québécois. Jack Layton, the NDP leader, has spent his career savaging previous Liberal governments.

Yet on Monday the three leaders wrote to the governor-general offering to form a Liberal-NDP coalition government. The Bloc will not join in but its 49 MPs will back it for the next 18 months. The letter prompted Ms Jean, a former refugee from Haiti, to cut short a trip to Europe to rush back to Ottawa. Under the constitution, it is the governor-general's prerogative to invite a party leader to form a government, with or without an election.

This sudden decision to stage a political coup was prompted by a government economic statement on November 27th. The ostensible reason for opposition outrage was that Jim Flaherty, the finance minister, offered no new measures to stimulate the economy. But that smacks of a pretext: despite alarmist headlines, for now the economy remains in relatively good shape.

What really provoked the opposition parties was that, having said there was no need for extraordinary measures, Mr Flaherty threw in some highly partisan ones: a big cut in public funding for political parties; a ban on strikes by public-service unions; and measures making it harder for women civil servants to complain if they are not paid the same as men.

A joke doing the rounds in Ottawa holds that Mr Harper, credited with having united two feuding right-of-centre parties to form the Conservatives in 2003, has now done what was thought impossible and united the left too. The government quickly dropped the measures on political funding and the right to strike. But it was too late to stop the opposition's plans to seize power.

The opposition's putative coalition is beset with flaws. Its problems start with its leader. Mr Dion piloted the Liberals to their worst-ever showing in the election. He is due to be replaced as Liberal leader at a party convention in May. Then there is policy, which has required some difficult compromises. Mr Dion has agreed to drop his unpopular carbon tax (he now backs a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions). Mr Layton has dropped his previous opposition to cuts in corporate taxes. A further awkwardness concerns reliance on the votes of the Bloc, whose raison d'être is the break-up of Canada.

All this means that Mr Harper may yet manage to cling to power. He has defiantly raised the political temperature. He has accused the Liberals of selling out the country to separatists (in fact, in his first term he sometimes relied on separatist votes and when in opposition the Conservatives similarly offered to replace a Liberal minority government with help from the Bloc and the NDP). The Conservatives are repeating that message in a blitz of radio and television advertising, as well as planning rallies across the country. He has vowed to “use all legal means to resist this undemocratic seizure of power”.

Nevertheless, the prime minister is damaged. Although there is no open revolt in Conservative ranks, several ministers pointedly failed to applaud the prime minister in the House of Commons this week. But Mr Harper shows no sign of contrition. Now he has bought himself time. He will use it to prepare a budget for January 27th, the day after Parliament will resume, that will doubtless include some measures to stimulate the economy. He will also hope that the opposition's ardour for unity may cool. But the parliamentary hiatus might allow the Liberals to bring forward their leadership vote and replace the lacklustre Mr Dion. Mr Harper may have merely won a stay of execution.

Whatever happens, this week's events may change Canadian politics for ever. Only the Liberals or Conservatives have governed in Ottawa since 1926, but Canada now has four significant parties (a fifth, the Greens, won nearly 7% of the vote but no seats). Coalition politics may be inevitable. Even so, Canadians have little idea who might be governing them after Christmas.